Zhangjiajie: A Honeymoon with China

Settling down in a new country, especially one like China, is like getting married. At first, all is potential delight – your partner is so deep and multi-faceted. Surely your new life will abound with carefree picnics and soulful conversations. Yeah, you’ll get to all those groovy karst formations and bamboo forests. Soon as you have a three-day weekend. Or during the next national holiday.

Pity how day-to-day reality quashes romance, isn’t it? Soon you grow tired of your spouse’s grey moods and frumpy appearance, all but forgetting the mysterious beauty that attracted you in the first place. And trying to recapture the magic is a lot harder than a winy dinner and a romantic DVD. A trip to Guilin during the May holiday will not make you fall in love all over again. Trust us.

For jaded expat and wide-eyed tourist alike, however, there’s Zhangjiajie. Misty, extra-eroded mountains? Check. Silent valleys cut by pristine rivers? Got it. Crystal lakes ringed by ancient forest? Yup. And no disrespect to Jiuzhaigou, but Zhangjiajie is almost ten thousand square kilometers, with only a small percentage stage-managed by eco police and Dept. of Tourism flaks. Zhangjiajie takes up the top left lobe of Hunan Province, and is still remote and large enough to entertain the tourist fantasy of going Grizzly Adams and never returning home.

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park

The beauty of this park is that, although vast, it forms but one of Zhangjiajie’s many attractions. But owning the lion’s share of sandstone-quartz pillar mountains, it does count as a priority. The natural, if foolish, tourist tendency is to seek higher ground. This is how most find their way to Huangshi Village, more observation platform than rustic settlement, 1300 meters above the distant sea.

Plenty of distinctive spots reward the hike up. Formations with names such as Sealed Book & Treasury Box and Golden Tortoise Exploring the Sea promise much more than a particularly large rock, after all. Want to get to Huangshi Village the easy way? Of course you do – can’t forget what century this is. There’s a cable car to the top, and hopefully ashtrays at the viewing platforms.


Tianmen Mountain National Forest Park

This holy site lies a mere eight kilometers from downtown Zhangjiajie City, but don’t rent that mountain bike unless you’re used to fifteen hundred meter climbs. Although sacred, this mountain offers a lot more than, say, a Mount Fuji, which up close is little more than an endurance hiking test.

The most popular way up is China’s very own stairway to heaven, Tongtian Avenue. A path carved as though by immortals, Tongtian Avenue has 99 turns, which somehow symbolize heaven’s nine palaces. At the end, Tianti, the celestial ladder, puts nine hundred and ninety nine steps between those who really want the view and the wannabes.

We jest, we jest. Of course there’s a cable car to the top, a 7200 meter ride, longest in the world, if we’re to believe the Hulk Hoganesque boasting of most Chinese tourist literature. The ride affords a nice gander at Tianmen Cave, a 130×60 meter maw that crumbled open in the side of a thousand-meter high cliff on Songliang Mountain some 1800 years ago.


Yuanjiajie

Oops, we didn’t mean to give the impression that Huangshi Village is the only place in Zhangjiajie to confer that ‘walk in the clouds’ mystique, that titillating hint of vertigo as you stare down on towering stone fingers that by all rights should have fallen over domino-style in the last earthquake. Yuanjiajie by virtue of its remoteness forms an independent fiefdom within Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, a sea of lofty stone fingers poking through modest veils of mist.

Yuanjiajie sits between Huangshi Village and Tianzi Mountain. The adventurous are recommended to try their hands at getting there by deciphering the various paths and quizzical responses of Chinese tourists. Two or three hours will turn grandeur-induced awe to a more realistic appraisal of man’s place in nature. When finally stumbled upon, the pitted highway will seem a road to redemption. When finally clambered upon, the rickety bus will seem a celestial chariot. The bus driver’s “Yuanyaye? Dao!” will be a benediction.


Gold Whip River

Why do all that climbing in Zhangjiajie, anyway, when a river runs through it? And not some overgrown, toxic has-been river like the Huanghe; we’re talking about a sylvan stream of such glittering beauty that Brad Pitt himself would be honored to put on his costume-department-issued hip-waders and pretend to go fly-fishing in it.

Only a mere seven and a half kilometers long, the Gold Whip nonetheless runs through enough leafy glens and grassy meadows to blow all those smokestacks back East almost out of mind. Rare flowers and jeweled birds reward the careful eye at every turn. And if you’re very unlucky, you might stumble on a troop of thirsty macaques. That’s right – unlucky, because you’ll treat them as long-lost primate cousins, where they would as soon snatch you bald-headed as nibble on your proffered BBQ-shrimp chip.


Baofeng Lake

A last rhetorical question – why walk by the river when you can float on a lake? Thirty hectares large and purer than an Antarctic snowcone, Baofeng Lake reflects the mountains around it as vividly as the sky. Guarded by verdant sandstone daggers and cliffs, the lake has such an aura of chaste beauty that it’s known as the home of the fairy mother goddess, whenever she takes a break from celestial intriguing.

You’ll feel guilty trailing your travel-soiled fingers in Baofeng’s waters, but not to worry. Plenty of sightseeing on shore lets you enjoy the lake from a more respectful distance. Waterfalls, gorges, and a Guanyin Temple of unparalleled kitschiness ring Baofeng Lake. As with spouses, sometimes only a little distance allows full appreciation.

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